


An Oft-Told Story

by juliusschmidt



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: A Gorilla, Angst, Exes, M/M, No Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-15 07:26:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13608486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juliusschmidt/pseuds/juliusschmidt
Summary: Harry spends his lunch with a wise gorilla named Patty at the Lincoln Park Zoo.





	An Oft-Told Story

**Author's Note:**

> much love to my betas!

_“The happening and telling are very different things. This doesn’t mean that the story isn’t true, only that I honestly don’t know anymore if I really remember it or only remember how to tell it. Language does this to our memories, simplifies, solidifies, codifies, mummifies. An off-told story is like a photograph in a family album. Eventually it replaces the moment it was meant to capture.”_ ― Karen Joy Fowler,  We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Patty resembles a zen master, eyes closed, legs crossed, palms up. She’s likely contemplating purpose, selfhood, the nature of love. 

Harry tries to mimic her energy, relaxing his shoulders and drawing a few deep breaths. Leaving behind the biting critiques of the senior partner and the neatly penned to-do list on his desk, Harry becomes fully present in this moment. 

He feels the wooden planks of the bench underneath him and the fire of the noon sun burning the tops of his cheeks, the tips of his ears, and the bare skin of his forearms. 

It’s _really_ hot, he realizes, and his silk shirt sticks uncomfortably against his back and beneath his arms. He unbuttons one button, and then another, and then three more, tugging the shirt back and forth away from his chest in an attempt to encourage a little air flow. 

A man and his young child step between Harry and Patty. He sighs, but he’s supposes it’s better than the group of teenage boys who’d ruined his last visit, taunting the poor gorilla about her round belly as if she couldn’t understand the bitterness of their tone. 

Harry takes a deep breath and straightens his back, preparing to head out of the zoo and back down the ten blocks to the unfinished brief he’s got open on his laptop. 

But then he stills, body turning to stone. 

He knows this man. He recognizes his red shirt. Harry purchased that very shirt one sunny afternoon after three hours, five shops, ten different trial outfits, and at least fifteen long, hard kisses from his college boyfriend, who managed to slip into every dressing room and pin Harry up against floor-length mirror after floor-length mirror. 

“Dad,” the little girl shouts, bouncing onto her toes and pointing at the glass, “look at him! He’s sleeping!” 

The man runs a hand through his daughter’s fine hair. It’s just on the brown side of dishwater, nearly the same shade as her father’s. Harry can practically feel the strands slipping between his fingers. 

_Lou._ The nickname pops to the top of the groundswell of memories rushing up to the front of Harry’s mind from the center of his now-aching chest. 

Harry’s imagined this moment hundreds of times. Thousands, maybe. 

But it’s not supposed to happen like this. It’s supposed to be the other way around, Harry laughing beside someone else who loves him and Louis, more pathetic and lonely than ever, drowning in regret over how he’d pushed Harry away. 

Harry can’t hear a word that Louis’ saying, but if his daughter’s delighted giggles are anything to go by, he’s happy. And Harry is most definitely drowning, nearly gasping for air as he struggles to free himself from the flood of images, all shaded grey with the sickening filter of nostalgia. 

Louis points at the sleeping gorilla. He’s saying something to the little girl, something funny, something that makes her laugh so hard her body folds in half like she’s been tickled. 

Harry knows he’s telling her a story about Patty. He remembers the way Louis could conjure detailed stories, right on the spot, like a magician pulling one colorful silk scarf after another out of thin air. 

On their first date, right here in front of the gorillas at the Lincoln Park Zoo, Louis explained that Bana, Patty’s would-be mother, was pursuing her dream of becoming a bus driver, sneaking out of the zoo at night and stealing city buses for practice. Harry still remembers: she coveted Route 37 because she liked driving between skyscrapers best of all. 

A gorilla. 

Driving a bus. 

Right down Wells. 

Harry laughed so hard that lemon ice had come out his nose. 

He can still feel the burn of it in his sinuses mixing with the glow of Louis’ bright smile and the gentle press of Louis’ hand on his back. 

He imagines standing up and walking over to Louis. He knows what he’d say. He’d ask if Bana’s dreams had changed now that she’s become a parent. They must’ve. 

Louis tugs at the hem of that familiar red shirt. If Harry hadn’t been completely certain that the man was Louis before, he is now. That little tic is unmistakable. 

Before dates, class, lunch with mom, practically any time he left the room, Louis would stand in front of the little mirror in their dorm for hours fidgeting with his clothes. Once Louis was late enough to make Harry anxious, Harry would wander over, wrap his arms around Louis from behind and whisper in his ear that he was the most beautiful man alive. 

It was true.

It probably still is. 

Harry wants to call out to Louis, see him turn around and gaze in Harry’s direction. He wants to discover whether or not the smile lines around his eyes have deepened, as Louis feared they would, and whether or not his lips are the same pale shade of pink they were the day Harry first kissed him. 

The sweats Louis’ wearing hang off his body, hiding the curves Harry knows are there. Louis’d always favored looser clothing, as opposed to jeans or khakis that would inevitably cling to his thighs and ass. Though he’d teased Louis about it relentlessly, Harry hadn’t minded this preference; they never had any trouble getting Louis’clothes off, at least.

Harry smiles at the thought, rolling his shoulders and rubbing the tops of his thighs. They’d spent more time naked than they had clothed that last year, when they’d lived together. 

Best sex he’d ever had, and he doesn’t think he can chalk it up to being only twenty-one and randy as a dog in heat, not fully. They’d learned each other well and, by the end, knew how to slot their bodies together perfectly, like pieces of a puzzle clicking into place with soft, satisfied sighs.

Harry wonders if Louis has a husband, suspects that the answer is _yes._

If so, their sex won’t be as good as Louis and Harry’s. It couldn’t possibly be, Harry thinks, a ping of pride at the base of his spine causing him to sit up a little straighter. 

Louis squats down to a level with his daughter. He’s always known just what to do with children. Even late at night or in the midst of painful goodbyes, he’d been able to transform his sisters’ tears into giggles with a few words and a silly twist of his face. 

Harry remembers the moment everything had begun to change. Curled up on Harry’s chest, sweaty and stuck together from a recent round of sex, Louis’d confessed that he was planning to change his major, switch out of the pre-law program that had brought them together and into an elementary education program instead. He wanted a stable job, one where he could work with kids every day and raise his own in the afternoons and over long, work-free summers. 

The July sun beats hot against Harry’s skin. Louis’ got what he wanted after all, looks like. 

Louis’ low dip has again revealed Patty, whose brown eyes stare, wide with curiosity, at the three visitors outside her home. Harry thinks she’s looking past Louis and his kid and right at him. They’re friends, or at least acquaintances, he and Patty, given how often Harry spends his lunches here on this bench. 

She tilts her head, as if she can read his thoughts, see into his past, and Harry’s gut clenches. He’d only been twenty-one, he argues silently with her. He _hadn’t_ been ready for marriage or kids or settling down. Not just yet. 

Louis’d been so certain of what he wanted-- a house in the Chicago suburbs near his mom, a job as a phys ed teacher for children who hadn’t yet hit puberty, a dog _and_ a cat, a husband, a passel of his own kids to care for and watch grow up. 

Harry didn’t know what kind of law he wanted to practice, or even whether he wanted to go into any practice at all. He’d always thought politics might be fun, or working for a judge. 

Harry wasn’t sure about staying in Chicago, or even the midwest. He’d dreamed of traveling, living for a couple of years on either coast before settling anywhere permanently. 

Harry wanted children, he knew that. He wanted a house and pets. But Louis had wanted it _then_. And Harry, well, he _hadn’t_. 

Harry’s throat has grown tight and the corners of his eyes sting. 

He wants those things _now_. 

“Mom!” Louis’ daughter shouts at a woman wearing a long blonde ponytail approaching them with a stroller. 

A woman. _A woman_. 

That can’t be right. 

She tilts the brim of her straw hat to block the sun and touches the little girl’s nose in greeting. 

Harry shifts on the bench, suddenly aware of the spaces between the planks beneath his thighs. 

Finally, Louis turns toward the woman, and Harry can see him, can see the wide smile on his face, and-- 

And his eyes are too close together and his forehead is too long. The jut of his chin is all wrong and his shoulders are far narrower than Louis’ had been, even at twenty-one. The front of the shirt bears the lettering of a brand Harry’s never worn in his life. 

The man is not Louis and the girl is not Louis’ daughter. 

Not-Louis presses a kiss to his wife’s cheek and then steps closer to take over pushing the stroller. He leads them away from Patty and onto the next exhibit. Harry allows himself to watch the little family that could have been Louis’ for one minute longer, counting the seconds. When he reaches sixty, he turns back to the gorillas.

Patty’s chewing on something green and leafy, but her eyes are closed again. He thinks she may have already mastered the art of _being_. Harry tries to still his jittery limbs and quiet his mind. He only has a few minutes before he’ll be late back from lunch and he’d like to spend them meditating. 

He can’t do it. 

He reaches back and digs his phone out of his pocket. He flips through his contacts for a moment before his thumb presses the name he’s tried to delete a dozen times. 

It’s dialing before he has a chance to think the better of it. He holds the phone up to his ear. 

“Hello?” 

Harry’s toes flex in his shoes. 

“Hi.” 

“Who is this?” 

Louis answered despite not having Harry’s number saved. Harry supposes he’d always been outgoing, chatting with strangers while in line for the toilet and asking store clerks about their day. 

“Hi, Louis, it’s um…” The urge to hang up wells up in Harry as strongly as as the urge that’d pushed him to call Louis seconds earlier. 

“Harry? Harry Styles?” 

“Yeah.” 

Louis doesn’t end the call and neither does Harry. 

On an exhale, Harry asks, “Have you left Chicago?” 

“No,” Louis replies on the edge of a wry laugh. “Why?” 

Harry’s heart pounds in his chest and he raises his free hand up to press against it, as if to still its rapid beat. 

“Are you at the Lincoln Park Zoo?” 

“No,” Louis draws out the word, amusement still tinging his tone. “What’s this about?” 

“Will you get a drink with me? I’d love to catch up.” 

He waits for Louis’ _yes_ , paying attention to the tight clench of muscles in his belly and the hard cement beneath his firmly, planted feet. 

Patty lifts her chin, opening one eye and then the other. One side of her mouth lifts in what is unmistakably a playful smile. 

**Author's Note:**

> You can learn more about Patty [here](https://www.youtube.com/user/lpzoo/search?query=patty).
> 
> [fic post](http://juliusschmidt.tumblr.com/post/171663414455/an-oft-told-story-by-juliuschmidt-2k-exes)


End file.
